Love

*864 *984 This case raises constitutional challenges to Senate Bill No. 277, which repealed the personal belief exemption to California's immunization requirements for children attending public and private educational and child care facilities. 1 Plaintiffs are four parents and their children residing throughout California and a California nonprofit corporation, A Voice for Choice, Inc. 2 Defendants are the California Department of Education, the California Department of Public Health and various state officials.

*985 As our colleagues explained in Brown : "In 1890, the California Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to a 'vaccination act' that required schools to exclude any child who had not been vaccinated against smallpox. [Citation.] In dismissing the suggestion that the act was 'not within the scope of a police regulation,' the court observed that, '[w]hile vaccination may not be the best and safest preventive possible, experience and observation ... dating from the year 1796 ... have proved it to be the best method known to medical science to lessen the liability to infection with the disease.' [Citation.] That being so, 'it was for the legislature to…